\ 


i 


m 

LEAGUE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 


The Conspiracy Against the Independ¬ 
ence of the American Republic 


By 

William Herbert Hobbs 


Of the University of Michigan 
Author of “The World War and its Consequences,” Etc. 


Reprinted from the “Detroit Free Press” of August 3, 1919, 
together with a Supplementary Note 
December, 1919 



ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 
JANUARY 9, 1920 






Gift 

Author 

m 26 




* « 

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Those Americans who are familiar with their country’s history, and 
who cherish a just pride in the heritage of independence won for them by 
the fathers, know that there were giants in those days, and that the con¬ 
ception of civil liberty which was perfected by Washington, Hamilton, 
Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Monroe was carried across the ocean 
to Europe to take root especially upon the soil of France. Time has 
served only to increase the intellectual stature and to emphasize the far¬ 
sighted statesmanship of these apostles of liberty. Gladstone declared 
that the Constitution of the United States was “the most perfect work 
ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man at a given time.” 

To our patriotic American citizens the light scorn expressed by their 
President for this heritage of liberty, echoed as it has been by a noisy 
claque, has brought consternation, caused pain and the keenest disap¬ 
pointment, and has lead to fear that the foundations of our liberty may 
already have been seriously undermined. A careful study of the problem 
has revealed a conspiracy against democracy which for magnitude and 
for long and secret preparation has no parallel in the world’s history—a 
conspiracy entered into between the American President and the League 
to Enforce Peace and aimed straight at the independence of the nation. 

This conspiracy was made possible only because of the exigency of 
the World War and the clothing of the American Executive with ar¬ 
bitrary powers in order to win the war and save the country. Advan¬ 
tage has been skillfully taken of the country’s danger in order to suppress 
important facts and to desseminate misleading information, almost from the 
moment that America entered the war. The main steps in the plot, con¬ 
sidered in their chronological sequence have been: (i) the propaganda 
started in Europe to make the President appear as a great emancipator 
■of the “plain people” of the world and offer them relief from their hard 
conditions of life through the talisman of a mysterious League of Na¬ 
tions; ( 2 ) a bludgeoning of the members of the Peace Conference, who 
were without interest in the League idea, to accept it and place it in ad¬ 
vance of the program of making peace with Germany, and this by the 
threat of supporting the German doctrine of “freedom of the seas,” 
arousing the socialist elements to overthrow the Allied governments, to 
withdraw from the conference, etc.; ( 3 ) a stupendous propaganda in 
favor of the League shaped to appeal to the emotions of the American 
people and so prevent any serious or thoughtful consideration of it; and 
( 4 ) through a system of intrigue and broken promises to cheat the United 
States Senate out of its constitutional participation in the treaty-making 
process, and generally to prevent effective publicity being given to the 
criticism of the Covenant. These several steps, for purposes of conven¬ 
ience will here be considered in other than their chronological sequence. 

Involved as main elements in the success of the plot have been: the 
“creation” of an official news service jealously guarded under direct con¬ 
trol of the President and modeled upon the Official News Service of the 
late Imperial German Government; a $ 100 , 000,000 war fund provided by 
Congress to be spent at the discretion of the Executive; the acceptance of 
censorship by the great press associations; the seizure of the ocean cables 
and the attempt to administer them under government control; the fi¬ 
nancial backing of Big Business due to the guarantee of foreign loans; 
and, most important of all, a ready acquiescence of the officials of the 
* League to Enforce Peace. This organization has stopped at nothing so 
long as its object seemed likely to be attained. 


— 4 — 


To accomplish this sinister purpose, Mr. Wilson has capitalized the 
unequalled resources of his great country, the unbounded generosity of 
her citizens, the valor of her soldiers, and the crying future needs of 
Europe for American aid; so that he has been made to appear through 
skilfully directed propaganda to be, in fact, America. This acquisition 
he has wielded as a club over the heads of his colleagues at the Peace 
Conference. As the Hon. David Jayne Hill, former United States Am¬ 
bassador to Germany, has expressed it: 

“The United States was necessary to a victorious conclusion of the 
Great War, and it is equally necessary for the future maintenance of 
peace. Representing in his own person, as it appeared, the future policy 
of America, it was possible for the President at any time to order his 
ship, to abandon the Conference, and to leave the Entente Allies to face 
Germany alone. That decision would have created a great embarrass¬ 
ment for the exposed countries like Belgium and France. Such a deser¬ 
tion, it is true, would not have met the approval of the American people, 
but they would have been powerless to avert its consequences.” 

As we are all aware, Mr. Wilson did succeed in coercing his col¬ 
leagues by applying this method, and his will was exercised to secure at 
least a part of his idea for a League of Nations by other and hardly less 
reprehensible methods. Mr. Frank H. Simonds, one of the ablest and 
most reliable of the correspondents at Paris, has told us how France was 
forced to give up her own stand and adopt the idea of a League of Na¬ 
tions. Mr. Wilson came to Paris, he says, resolved that there should 
be a League of Nations, but he found French interests fixed upon -the 
salvation of France rather than upon the formulation of the principles of 
the League. He showed disapproval, and when France appealed to him 
to go and see the devastated regions, although he had held off the as¬ 
sembling of the Conference by a full month of triumphal journeys over 
Europe, he coldly refused the request. Says Mr. Simonds: 

“I do not think that any single act of any man ever carried with it 
profounder disappointment than Mr. Wilson’s refusal to go to the north¬ 
ern regions and see what the Boche had done. Little by little his course 
here had the effect at least of creating the impression that he cared nothing 
for the life or death of France, that he was not concerned with those 
things which the tragic years of war had burned into the soul of every 
French man and woman. 

“I do not think it possible accurately to represent how profound 
was the disappointment of France at this course of the American Presi¬ 
dent. A sense fir^t of desertion and then of utter isolation crept into the 
French heart, as more and more the American attitude toward France 
passed from mere coldness with respect to French necessities to open 
criticism and hardly concealed suspicion. I do not think one would exag¬ 
gerate by saying that three months ago France believed the war won, and 
today, as a result of what has occurred here in the Peace Conference, 
there is something amounting to real terror lest the war shall be lost after 
all and France left alone again across the pathway of a Germany in¬ 
creased in power and population by the last war.” 

It came apparently well authenticated from the Peace Conference 
that when the League was “on the rocks” because France could not sub¬ 
scribe to a compact which left her defenseless against the traditional en¬ 
emy, the situation was “saved” by an “American diplomat” notifying M. 



5 — 


Bourgeois “that President Wilson was very near the limit of his pa¬ 
tience in the matter” and that it would have to be this league or no league 
at all. After consulting Premier Clemenceau a reluctant consent was 
given rather than leave France deprived of the good will of America. 

Accustomed to a ministry quickly responsive to the people’s will, 
France has failed to realize that Mr. Wilson has not represented Ameri¬ 
ca in this action, or that he went self-appointed to Paris after his direct 
appeal to the American people to approve whatever he should do had 
been turned down by a popular majority of 1,200,000 votes. Such blanket 
approval of his future actions he had already requested of the United 
States Senate, and it had been denied him. Opposition to his going to 
Europe at all had been very general throughout the country, yet he sailed 
away in great state and surrounded by a retinue and an escort such as 
has been rarely equaled by any other than an Oriental potentate. 

In his valedictory address to the joint houses of Congress before 
sailing for Europe, the President said: 

“It is now my duty to play my full part in making good what they 
(American soldiers) offered their life’s blood to obtain. 

“I shall be in close touch with you on this side of the water and you 
will know all that I do.” 

Touching upon his seizure of the ocean cables, he said. 

"I hope that the results will justify my hope that the news of the next 
few months may pass with the utmost freedom, and with the least pos¬ 
sible delay from each side of the sea to the other,” and he added of his 
trip, “I am the servant of the nation. I can have no private thought or 
purpose of my own in performing such a mission.” 

Readers of the European news dispatches are aware how difficult it 
has been to secure any important news from the Peace Conference save 
only such inspired and highly colored political essays as those of David 
Lawrence, Richard Oulahan and Charles H. Grasty, always filled with 
adulation of the Presidents’ actions; and we must conclude that the 
“close touch” which was to be maintained with the United States Con¬ 
gress has been limited to private dispatches to the President’s mouthpiece 
upon the floor—of the Senate. Senator Hiram Johnson of California 
has stated with force and with entire truthfulness: 

“The heavy hand of a war-time Government has been held upon the 
press, until in the East the liberty of the press has passed into history; 
upon the people themselves the clutch has been maintained so that only 
that which the administration desired spoken should be expressed. Na¬ 
tional propaganda, for the first time in our history suppressing current 
events, has manufactured public opinion, and that opinion has been made 
but the echo of what the national propaganda has decreed. This dead¬ 
ening and perverting mind process has had its evil effects and has been 
one of the powerful agencies for preventing people from knowing the 
facts or the possibilities of the league of nations.” 

When the first form of the Covenant was made public at Paris, the 
President cabled a request that the Congress refrain from discussion of 
it until he could return and explain its provisions in person. He then 
planned his arrival in Washington to take place during the closing days 
of the session when the rush of appropriation bills made all discussion 
of the League impossible, and immediately thereafter he set sail for 



I* 


— 6 — 

1 

France. He did not make good his promise to explain the terms of the 
Covenant, and so the opportunity was lost for a free discussion. 

The many measures left without action, and the need of reconstruc¬ 
tion legislation demanded that the new Republican Congress be at once 
called in special session, but this the President stubbornly refused. He 
said in explanation : 

“It is not in the interest of the right conduct of public affairs that I 
should call the Congress in special session while it is impossible for me to 
be in Washington, because of a more pressing duty elsewhere, to co¬ 
operate with the Houses.’’ 

The Hon. Elihu Root, our greatest authority on constitutional law 
and a former Secretary of State of the United States, says of the con¬ 
stitutional right and duty of the Senate to fully deliberate upon and dis¬ 
cuss the League of Nations: 

“Under the Constitution it is the business of the Senate to take the 
lead in such a discussion, to compare the different opinions expressed in 
the several states, and to draft in proper form the amendments which 
the public judgment seems to call for. It is unfortunate that the Senate 
has not been permitted to perform that duty in this case. It seems to me 
that the Senate ought to have been convened for that purpose immediately 
after the fourth of March. In addition to the regular and extra sessions 
of the Congress, the Senate has convened separately forty-two times 
since it was first organized, ordinarily to confirm a few appointments or 
pass on unimportant treaties, never for any reason more important than 
exists now.” 

When in the following *May the convening of Congress could no 
longer be put off, the President’s mouthpiece upon the floor of the Sen¬ 
ate set up the plea that since the Covenant was now a part of the treaty*— 
and since it had been amended after being first published, any discussion 
of it was premature and improper until it had been submitted in its final 
form to Germany. When submitted to the German Government, pub¬ 
lished in that country and widely distributed over Europe, the text was 
still denied to the United States Senate and even to the members of the 
Foreign Affairs Committees. Copies which were sent from Germany 
are reported to have been intercepted by the Government. No unbiased 
person who has made any careful study of the political methods of Wood- 
row Wilson will doubt for a moment that this course of action was pur¬ 
sued throughout for any other purpose than to prevent a free and fair 
discussion of the Covenant of the League of Nations. 

While opponents of the League were openly denounced as traitors, 
and passport regulations were so managed as to prevent their presence in 
Paris, its advocates were received there with open arms and afforded ev¬ 
ery facility for launching in America a campaign of stupendous propor¬ 
tions in its favor. Oscar S. Strauss, prominent pacifist and a director of 
the League to Enforce Peace, on returning from Paris in February made 
known in an interview that he “had established a perfect liason between 
his organization and the Official Commission of the Peace Conference 
at work on the Constitution of the League of Nations under the Chair¬ 
manship of President Wilson.” The well-known pacifist, Hamilton Holt, 
editor of the Independent, returned about a month later with the state- 


*See note at end. 



7 — 


nient that for several months he had been the “Liason Officer of the 
League to Enforce Peace” at Paris. 

A few days after Holt’s return, and months before any copy of the 
text had been allowed to reach the co-ordinate treaty-making body of the 
country, T. J. Meek, Extension Secretary of the League to Enforce 
Peace, made public that “more than 30,000 volunteer speakers were being 
organized to explain the entire League of Nations to the American peo¬ 
ple,” and he went on to say: 

“Speakers are told that loyalty to the movement and to the organiza¬ 
tion does not demand their approval of every word in the Paris Cove¬ 
nant, but after the Covenant is amended and adopted at the Peace Confer¬ 
ence and comes before the United States Senate, they are expected to 
urge its ratification. 

“The Extension Department has bureaus which deal with labor, ag¬ 
riculture, the churches and women’s organizations. Each of these is under 
a special secretary. Proof of the effectiveness of this work is the fact that 
the leading organizations representing these groups—for example, the 
American Federation of Labor, the Farmers’ National Council, the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the National Educational 
Association, and many of the well-known National Women’s Organiza¬ 
tions—have approved the League.” 

At the time this interview was given out, the propaganda work of 
the League to Enforce Peace had been going on vigorously for weeks, 
though the President’s agents were urging the impropriety of discus¬ 
sion in those quarters which might be hostile. A distinguished body of 
advocates of the Wilson Covenant headed by Ex-President Taft and in¬ 
cluding Hon. Henry Morgenthau, Ex-Ambassador to Turkey, Dr. Henry 
Van Dyke, Ex-Minister to The Hague, Dean Brown of the Yale Divinity 
School, and Professor Wilson of Harvard, had “swung round the circle” 
to speak in mass meetings and expound the virtues of the League. That 
this type of political revival meeting was successful in achieving its end 
of “loading up” the people before effective counter-arguments could be 
put forward, is naively attested by Mr. Morgenthau in an address which he 
made at the conclusion of the tour. Of the audiences which had been ad¬ 
dressed he said: 

“It is astonishing how bewildered they all were at this problem, 
and with what intense interest they listened to the argument, and how all 
of them became persuaded of the duty of America to feel resolved that it 
is a great privilege to be the Samaritan for the Eastern Hemisphere. 
There was no hesitacy or half-heartedness in the approval given by all of 
them. Their resolutions of approval were passed with enthusiasm and un¬ 
reservedly and from the depths of their souls.” 

In reading this naive confession there rise before us pictures of the 
old-time religious revival meetings in which the exhorter hurried the peo¬ 
ple to the altar before there was time for mature reflection upon the fate¬ 
ful step which they were taking, and one wonders whether the distin¬ 
guished speakers of the party ever stopped to consider the ethics of their 
conduct. 

Somewhat later a second group of speakers for the League consist¬ 
ing of President Lowell of Harvard University, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise 
and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw swung round the circle and addressed mass 
meetings particularly in the home districts of those Senators who had 



— 8 — 


signed the “round robin” asking that the Covenant be not interwoven with 
the Peace Treaty, so as to permit action upon it without prejudice to an 
early conclusion of peace. Rabbi Wise, a pacifist who had opposed pre¬ 
paredness, is quoted by the New York Times as having said : 

“Any one who deliberately undermines the work of President Wilson 
in his endeavor to bring about the League is guilty of moral treason and 
will be dealt with by the American people in due time. Any leader of the 
Governments of France, Britain or Italy who would dare get up and 
publicly declare that he was opposed to the League would not survive 
politically for twenty-four hours.” 

United States Senator Hiram Johnson has said of this stupendous 
propaganda: 

“And long before we saw a line of this secret document a tremendous 
propaganda, financed with hundreds of thousands of dollars, obtained 
from clubs and organizations enthusiastic indorsements. Our people were 
taught to chant “promote peace and prevent war.” The formula “pro¬ 
mote peace and prevent war” swept over all the land, and its necessary 
corollary, before there was any league of nations at all, was the indorse¬ 
ment of the fantastic thing which feared the light in its creation and has 
denied to those most affected by it the slightest knowledge of the circum¬ 
stances, events, and details of its composition. I received, just as other 
Senators did, innumerable resolutions before any one of us had the 
slightest conception of what the league of nations was, and the reso¬ 
lutions, in like tenor, have continued from that time to the present. Be¬ 
fore publication of it various train loads of distinguished gentlemen were 
going about the country holding meetings and conventions in different lo¬ 
calities advocating an undisclosed document dealing with the future of the 
Republic. 0 

“Of course, when the document was ultimately given publicity, those 
who had in advance so hysterically and enthusiastically embraced it con¬ 
tinued their advocacy. And while most of them grudgingly admitted 
what the President denied, that it required amendment, nevertheless, 
whether it had been amended or not, whether the most treasured policies 
of the Republic had been touched or destroyed, would not have altered 
the hectic hysteria of the league of nations men. That they have created 
a tremendous sentiment in this country by the repetition of their formula, 
‘Promote peace and prevent war,’ is perhaps so. They rush upon the 
platform and demand of their auditors, ‘Don’t you want to prevent war?’ 
and there is immediate unanimity in the response, ‘Of course we want to 
prevent war.’ Thereupon the advocates say, ‘Inasmuch as you are against 
war and desire to prevent it, you must favor the league of nations.’ And 
the ordinary man, accepting the statement, subscribes to the resolutions 
to ‘promote peace and prevent war.’ ” 

The propaganda has not entirely neglected the American soldier and 
sailor. When “my fourteen points” was not alone an unpleasant mem¬ 
ory, as it is today, but a present peril as well, Mr. Wilson sought to con¬ 
vey to the Congress that he held a mandate from our sons fighting in the 
war to put through his program at the Peace Conference. In his Me¬ 
morial Day address at the Suresnes cemetery at Paris but a few weeks ago 
he made it equally clear that it was for his League of Nations that they 
had given their life’s blood. 

It is hardly likely^ that the precise motives of all our fighting men were 
identical, though we feel assured that the vast majority of them fought 


— 9 — 


to defeat Germany, “Get the Kaiser,” and save their country and the 
world from an immediate menace of autocracy. After a most gallant 
nght which had called forth the praise of the French, one American divis¬ 
ion is reported to have explained that they fought to show the Allies that 
Americans are not “too proud to fight;” and nothing is more certain than 
that as a body our soldiers and sailors did not fight in order to set up 
a League of Nations. That an American President should invade the 
sacredness of a soldiers’ memorial service in order to promote such prop¬ 
aganda merely illustrates to what length this perverse mania has been car¬ 
ried. Ex-President Taft, who on the same Memorial occasion had pre¬ 
sumed to address a body of Civil War veterans upon the League of Na¬ 
tions, received a rebuke in a notification that he would be permitted to 
speak only provided he choose a different subject. 

But the propaganda instituted by the League to Enforce Peace did not 
stop with these more or less open methods. A leaf was borrowed from 
the book of the Germans, who have developed propaganda beyond 
that of any other national group and who have devised the form letters 
and telegrams used in opposition to a shipment of munitions. Senators 
who had dared to oppose the League or urge deliberation, such as Sena¬ 
tors McCormick, Brandagee and Reed, found themselves denounced in 
letters coming from secretaries purporting to speak for the membership of 
various organizations, and their mail was filled with letters conforming 
more or less closely to definite patterns. The Secretary of the League to 
Enforce Peace had already made public how a special secretary had been 
placed in charge of each class of organization, such as labor, clergymen, 
professors, teachers, etc. Senator McCormick of Illinois wisely made 
public the nature of the persecution to which he was subjected from these 
sources. Writing late in March he said: 

“The first letters that came to my office were from various women’s 
clubs over Illinois. Many of them were practically alike. They con¬ 
sisted simply of letters from secretaries of the clubs, enclosing resolu¬ 
tions, asking Congress to stand behind Wilson and to approve a League 
of Nations. One glance at them was sufficient to indicate that they were 
the result of some concerted action or propaganda. 

“The next letters in favor of the League were from ministers and 
churches. They indicated that the Federal Council of Churches had ap¬ 
parently got behind Mr. Wilson, without any regard as to the particular 
plan he might work out at Paris. 

“In none of these lettters was there anything to indicate that the 
churches had given careful and analytical study to the Paris Covenant. 

“Then came the next class of letters—those from the Professors of 
the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. I had a tor¬ 
rent of them—practically all condemning me for signing the Lodge reso¬ 
lution. It was quite apparent that these professional gentlemen either 
had not read the resolution or else they preferred to disregard it. Be¬ 
cause I signed that resolution, which urged the peace delegates to sign 
a peace first and then give careful and deliberate consideration to the for¬ 
mation of the League of Nations, the professors attempted to put me in 
a position of opposing any sort of a league. 

“At first my letters, coming as they did from groups which had been 
put to work carefully and methodically, were mostly in favor of Wilson 
and any sort of a League of Nations, whether it protected America or 
not. 

“Today my mail is ten to one opposed to the Paris Covenant in its 





present shape. And if the form letters are excepted it is almost unani¬ 
mously against it.” 

But the propaganda for the League which was fathered by Mr. Wil¬ 
son, had its beginning far back of the American proceedings which have 
been referred to, and the agency of this propaganda was the official news 
bureau directed by George Creel, euphoniously denominated the Commit¬ 
tee on Public Information. This Creel news bureau has been modelled 
upon that of the late German Empire and has existed in large part for 
the same purpose, namely the glorification of the nation’s head, under 
whose control it has been maintained at the urgent insistence of the 
President. 

Branches of the Creel committee were early established in the cap¬ 
itals of the Allied Nations, and in them, as in America, the attempt has 
successfully been made to convey the impression that America is Mr. 
Wilson—it is the old dictum of Louis XIV, “I am the State.” The meth¬ 
od chiefly employed has been to flood each Allied foreign country with 
portraits of Mr. Wilson on posters and post cards and also with trans¬ 
lations of his speeches preaching the “new freedom”* and his love for 
men “in plain jackets,” and more especially the great League of Nations 
which was to end all wars and with them the burdens of military serv¬ 
ice and heavy taxation. A group of socialists under the direction of 
John Spargo organized as the Social Democratic League of America 
was sent abroad to preach the same doctrines in public addresses. Con¬ 
siderable bodies of men of the photographic section of the Signal Corps 
of the United States Army were detailed to prepare the thousands of 
photographs of Mr. Wilson and the official reels in which he figured. No 
occasion was too sacred to be invaded for this purpose. When Paris 
made a holiday in honor of the American President upon his arrival 
from America, the most conspicuous feature of the procession which 
moved up the beautiful avenue of the Champs Blysees between the throng¬ 
ing multitudes on either side was a lofty timbered platform mounted upon 
an American army truck from the perch of which a moving picture man 
continuously covered the President as he bowed to the throngs on either 
side. In Italy after the terrible disaster of Caporetto, when the Italian 
Government begged the American Government to send them even a single 
regiment of American troops, in order to recover the morale of the ar¬ 
mies and the people, the request was long denied. The officers of the 
American Red Cross were however, specially enjoined in distributing 
food to state that this was given by the American Red Cross (of which 
organization Mr. Wilson is president) “to improve Italian morale.” 

Colonel Frederick Palmer of General Pershing’s staff, who had charge 
of the censorship of the news in the A. E. F., has referred to this propa¬ 
ganda in the following paragraphs: 

“The name of Wilson was better known than that of Washington 
or Lincoln from Warsaw to Paris and Scotland to Sicily. Our Govern¬ 
ment propaganda had spent many millions circulating his speeches and 


*Mr. Wilson’s book “The New Freedom” has been shown by testi¬ 
mony at the trials of I. W. W. offenders to have been the most popular 
of the books which influenced them to adopt their particular viewpoint, 
and according to report it was found necessary to withdraw it from cir¬ 
culation as a war measure. 



— 11 — 


posting his pictures, and inculcating the phrases of his speeches which 
bespoke world idealism. He might appeal to the people of Europe—for 

they had suffered most from the war—to support him in his policy. 

But the real public opinion of the Allies was not with the crowds of 
the cities, which have the curiosity and the changeability of the crowds. 
It was with the adult voters of Europe under 45 who have been fighting. 
1 hey are in uniform, and, if publicly, they were not privately, voiceless. 
What they think and what they feel go home to the mothers and fathers in 
the peasant homes and the humble homes of the cities with an influence 
more telling that the cheers of the crowds. They are not soldiers by pro¬ 
fession, but citizens—the citizens who will mould the future. They have 
learned to think in simple terms in face of death/’ 

There can be no doubt that in Italy particularly the result of Mr. 
Creel s propaganda was that the personnel of the crowds looked upon 
Mr. Wilson almost as a second Messiah. Let Mr. Spargo, the socialist 
who was speaking for the President’s policies in Italy, relate the con¬ 
ditions when he talked there in 1918. Whenever he referred to “Presi¬ 
dent Wilson and to America’s idealism as interpreted by him and to the 
proposal of the League of Nations, there was invariably loud cheering 
and unbounded enthusiasm. It was not the cheering of politeness to a 
visitor, but the passionate cheering of men who rested all their faith on 
the American people and in the program set forth by President Wilson.” 
As Mr. Wilson rode in triumph through the streets of Italian cities, the 
cry, II salvatore, (The Savior), went up repeatedly. In his speech at the 
Metropolitan Opera House on the eve of his return to Europe, Mr. Wil¬ 
son painted this pathetic picture of an incident of his triumphal journey 
to Rome shortly before the assembling of the Peace Conference: 

“When I was in Italy a little limping group of wounded Italian sol¬ 
diers sought an interview with me. I could not conjecture what it was 
they were going to say to me, and with the greatest simplicity, with a 
touching simplicity, they presented me with a petition in favor of the 
League of Nations. Their wounded limbs, their impaired vitality were 
the only argument they brought with them. It was a simple request 
that I lend all the influence that I might happen to have to relieve future 
generations of the sacrifices that they had been obliged to make. That 
appeal has remained in my mind as I have ridden along the streets in 
European capitals and heard cries of the crowd for the League of Na¬ 
tions.” 

Of this incident the Providence Journal under the editorial direction 
of Mr. John R. Rathom, whose wonderful success in uncovering the 
German plots against the life of the nation played so important a role, 
has this to say: 

“There are two things about this statement which make it more than 
ordinarily interesting. The first is that the incident of the interview 
“sought” with Mr. Wilson by wounded Italian soldiers, when they pre¬ 
sented him with a petition in favor of the League of Nations, was a little 
piece of propaganda worked up personally by Mr. George Creel, who him¬ 
self headed the delegation.” 

How unsubstantial was in reality the imposing edifice of Wilsonian 
allegiance which the Creel advertising bureau had reared upon Italian 
soil, was to be revealed when. Woodrow Wilson in the role of coercing 



his Italian colleague at the Peace Conference presumed to appeal over 
the heads of the constituted Italian authorities to the sovereign Italian 
people. That unobtrusive voice which Colonel Palmer tells us was not 
heard in the street crowds, but whose potent influence he so accurately 
gaged—the fathers and mothers of the soldiers—rallied behind the Gov¬ 
ernment to give a prompt and decisive response to this attack upon na¬ 
tional rights. The socialistic manifestations were found to have been 
largely noise and bluster, the Via Wilson in Milan was promptly re¬ 
named Via Finnic, Wilson commemorative tablets which had been erected 
in the various cities were covered from sight, and our Government found 
it necessary to hastily recall Americans from the country. No idol was 
ever more quickly overthrown, for, “Long live President Wilson” now 
became “Down with Wilson.” 

An only less complete change of setniment has appeared in France, 
and it is an earnest that all which is required to reveal to the public the 
menace of the Wilson Covenant of the League of Nations is to kick away 
the screen, tear off the disguise of the news camouflage, and let in the 
full light upon this vast scheme of propaganda instituted by an autocrat¬ 
ic and self-centered Executive who has been clothed with arbitrary powers 
as a war measure, and who has dared to believe that he can coerce the 
United States Senate to acquiesce in a defiance of the provisions of the 
American Constitution. 

Says the Hon. David Jayne Hill, the distinguished diplomat and his¬ 
torian : 

“The circumstances in which this country has been placed by the 
President’s decision to carry into execution a policy in contradiction of 
all the traditions of the Republic, find no parallel in the history of any 
free people in the enjoyment of constitutional liberty.” 

And again he says: 

“This defiance assumed what every autocratic usurpation of author¬ 
ity assumes, namely, that power could be invoked to sustain it. In this 
case it would no doubt be an attempt, in the nominal interest of peace, to 
bring political pressure to bear upon refractory Senators, in order to com¬ 
pel them to yield to a superior will. It requires no, reflection to perceive 
that if this were done and were successful, it would mark the extinction 
of representative and even of constitutional government in the United 
States. That it was ever even contemplated indicates a departure from 
the principles on which our Government is based which should awaken a 
deep concern for the future and call attention to the perils of autocratic 
as distinguished from representative democracy.” 

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 
(December 20, 1919) 

Since the above was published in the Detroit Free Press, much new 
light has been thrown upon this conspiracy directed against representa¬ 
tive government in the United States. 

It will be remembered that following upon the famous White House 
dinner of March 4th, at which the members of the Senate Committee 
on Foreign affairs were the President’s guests and at which opposition 
to the League of Nations in the form promulgated by Mr. Wilson was 
frankly expressed, the President issued a threat that he would have his 
“Covenant” so intertwined with the Treaty of Peace that it woujd not be 
in the power of the United States Senate, to separate it, and that body 


— 13 — 


would willy-nilly be compelled to adopt it without the crossing of a t or 
the dotting of an i. Thereupon the coordinate treaty-making power of the 
government, which had been so superciliously ignored and flouted, sent 
out its warning in the form of a round robin signed by thirty-seven Sen¬ 
ators—a sufficient number to defeat the treaty—and formally notified the 
Peace Council that unless it were modified so as to eliminate the objec¬ 
tionable articles of the Covenant — unless thoroughly Americanized — they 
would refuse to ratify the treaty. In his valedictory address delivered the 
following evening at the Metropolitan Opera House, the President said : 

“When that treaty comes back, gentlemen on this side will find the 
Covenant not only in it, but so many threads of the treaty tied to the 
Covenant that you cannot dissect the Covenant from the treaty without 
destroying the whole vital structure.” 

How President Wilson made good his threat of defiance, in so far 
as the Peace Council was concerned, has been told in the Saturday Eve¬ 
ning Post of Oct. 4, 1919, by Air. William Allen White, the representative 
at Paris of a syndicate of American newspapers, and this notwithstanding 
the fact that he has been an ardent advocate of the Wilson Covenant: 

“while the President was absent in America the whole American 
Commission agreed with the other peace commissioners that there should 
be two documents—a treaty and a League Covenant. The American 
Commissioners sent Colonel House down to Brest to notify the Presi¬ 
dent what they had done. The matter was signed, sealed and delivered. 
It took the President three minutes on Friday at Brest to annul the whole 
agreement between his commissioners and the Peace Conference and to 
declare that there would be one document and one only. 

“Saturday morning the French, feeling that they could win the Pres¬ 
ident over, announced that there would be two documents. 

“Saturday night Colonel House told us there would be one docu¬ 
ment. 

“Sunday morning the French again insisted that there would be two— 
and then a funny thing happened. 

“Tuesday we American newspaper men were all summoned to meet 
Lord Robert Cecil and discuss his later draft of the League of Nations. 
We went up to the Hotel Astoria, the British Headquarters, where we 

found Lord Robert.who innocently discussed the various phases of 

nhe League without telling us why he called us. 

“Then some inquisitive reporter said: ‘What about separating the 
Covenant and the Treaty?’ 

“Without batting an eye or moving a muscle of his fine sensitive 
face Lord Robert Cecil said: ‘I am authorized to say on behalf of the 
British delegation that there will be but one document.’ 

“Then we knew the purpose of the meeting. In some horse trade 
or other back of the scenes in the secret place of the most high the Presi¬ 
dent had made some sort of a dicker with the British to desert the French 
in the matter of the two documents, and the announcement was made in 
that way. After that the French never squeaked again about the separa¬ 
tion of the League and the Treaty. Probably Colonel House put the deal 
through.” 

In different language the facts have been given the public by Freder¬ 
ick Moore, the New York Tribune’s correspondent at Paris, and by Ray 
Stannard Baker, the successor to Colonel House in the President's close 



— 14 


confidence. The proposal to thus by intrigue defeat Senate action was 
made by Ex-President Taft in his speech at the Metropolitan Opera 
House on March 5th. 

To learn what inducement it was which made the British Government 
consent to become an accessory in this conspiracy to defeat representa¬ 
tive government in the United States, we shall probably have to wait until 
the memoirs of the personages in the Council have been published. By 
many it is believed that the six to one voting power in the League As¬ 
sembly which was granted to Great Britain constituted the quid pro quo. 

The consequence of this intrigue has been that the Senate of the United 
States has practically been given no opportunity to reject the Covenant 
outright, but only to Americanize it before ratification. This has been 
done by a decisive majority, and the Republican majority has voted for 
ratification of the Treaty with these reservations. Acting under orders 
from Mr. Wilson, their party head, the Democratic minority have been 
able to prevent an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the body which is 
necessary for ratification. 

The President has thus by his own act killed the child of his crea¬ 
tion, and the responsibility for the defeat of the Treaty must also rest 
upon him. Americans have now learned that it is within the power of 
their chief public servant to play the role of their -master and dictator, 
and that, no matter how much his acts may be disapproved and this dis¬ 
approval be expressed in votes, there is no effective redress possible before 
his term of office expires. Perhaps more than any other form of govern¬ 
ment, except that of Turkey, our American system lends itself to the pur¬ 
poses of any despot who may be placed in power as its Chief Executive. 









































































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